I think jcarl only had one armor set in mind when he started this. muhahahaha!!!

Current Plan

Mod Varient #1 - Vvardenfell Glass Armor
- Adds unique enchanted armor that must be taken from enemy PCs. Each enemy will have a different colored set with different enchantments and different weapons.
- There will be light and heavy armor that is visually different (heavier-looking).
- Each enemy NPC carries a unique enchanted armor set and one unique enchanted weapon that they specialize in.
- When enemy NPCs are conquered, vendor shops will sell non-enchanted versions of their armor and the ENTIRE set of matching (colored) weapons.
- One set of unique non-enchanted armor that will be very close in appearance to Morrowind Glass armor.
- Various sets of unique enchanted armor will be available. Currently in Black, Blue, Cyan, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, White and Yellow.
- Various sets of non-enchanted armor will be made available for purchase at vendor shops (more will be appear over time in the vendor's inventory)
- Special Spell: Vvardenfell Glass Fire - This spell is available when all pieces of an armor set are worn together. It will set the armor on fire (color based on armor color), 60 second duration, Novice in Illusion requirement, 15 foot radius of light, 100% resistant to fire, 100% resistant to frost, 50% weakness to magic.
- Special Spell: Vvardenfell Glass Vision - This spell is available when all pieces of an armor set are worn together. It will set enable night vision for 60 seconds and have a Novice in Illusion requirement.
- Estimated Size: Uncompressed: 300 MB, Compressed: 60 MB

Just got Oblivion installed on the make-shift PC I have at home so I will be able to start working on the plugin and model work again! Yippie!!!!

I will have to remember to save often because something is wonky with the PC where it just decides to reboot itself. This issues is independent of the OS since I had Win7 installed when I first noticed it and completely re-formatted the PC and installed WinXP for stability.

I have a thread over at TESNexus where I am researching components to build a new PC and may actually have it up-and-running before the end of the year!!! That will take my gaming and modding to a whole new level!

My new PC was built in early January 2010 but family matters came up and I probably did not even startup the PC but maybe 4 or 5 times during that month and part of February.

Things settled down fairly well last week and I have prepped my rig to be an Oblivion developer platform once again and my 1st project was to get Vvardenfell Glass going again, evaluate the extent to which I had lost key source files and rebuild what has been lost.

As of today, I have most of the models back to where they were and have actually been improving them.

All source textures were lost except the very original TIFF files (diffuse only) for the armor set from Grimdeath way back when this project first started. I finally have the source textures re-created (Diffuse, Normal map and Glow map) and ready to begin the color offshoots. Since so much was lost, I am actually playing around with the folder structure and optimizing how it will be distributed (and saved a quite a bit of space by utilizing shared files)

While re-working the armor models, I have improved them slightly and optimized them which saves a bit more on the final mod size as well as performance gains.

I started working on the textures today and was able to get pretty far. I had originally lost all my weapon textures but themythofstrider created a new set of textures that better fits the armor textures. Unfortunately, he only gave me the compressed DDS files. When I found that the alpha layers needed some manipulation, I asked for the source files but unfortunately, his PC crashed along with the source textures...that means the textures will be compressed two times which isn't a good idea but we have no choice.

The texture templates for the armor and weapons are now all prepped for easy color changes and I have already finished making all the color variants and they match very well in-game.

I have a fairly descent normal map that I am using right now but the finalized version will have the glass 100% smooth (currently it rough like the metal).

I thought of a great idea regarding the glass creatures. I wrote down the idea on paper and worked it out. It is going to require a bit of scripting to make it all work though but I think it will be well worth the extra work.

I reached a "finished" point with the modeling of the heavy armor. I also created the ground meshes. While doing this, I looked over the light armor ground meshes and decided they needed some fixin since I had learned a LOT since I first created them. Now the collision models are much more optimized and not such a strain on the system...and they are 100% accurate to the shape of the mesh.

I am going to work on the shape of the heavy shield a bit more to make it look even heavier.

After that, I will crank out the female versions of the light and heavy armor (vanilla body)...which shouldn't take too long. Wow, that's 4 sets of modeled armor!

No time for screenshots...besides, it isn't much different that what has already been shown. More than anything, the changes are made to look good while moving around in-game with the light reflecting off it. Screenshots simply cannot do it justice.

I've been working on the material settings, glow FX and texture colors. Got most of it worked out now. Just making some tweaks to the color levels of the shield to better match the armor and I think I will be ready to start mass producing the color variants. Up to this point, I have only been working on the green versions. Once I am happy with the light/heavy/male/female sets, it will be a simple but tedious task to crank out the other color variations. The textures are done but it is just a matter of copying all the green NIFs to the other color folders and updating the texture paths.

Every time I looked at screenshots of the armor, I kept hating on the greaves because they just didn't quite "match" the rest of the armor look. Well, now I'm finally happy with it.

Working on the normal map tweaks now and expect to be done with the greaves textures in about 2 more hours worth of work. (yes, I'm slow...I like check my work over and over especially when I'm about to flag an item as completed and never go back to it)

I've included a bonus armor set in various colors. Each armor set consists of 4 models (2 body, 2 ground) and in 9 colors, that is 36 models. But lucky for you guys, they share an existing texture map and therefore do not significantly increase the size of the mod! Each set of NIFs are 1.8 MB which means total size will be 64 MB increase. The menu icons are done and all entries added to the plugin but this will only be light armor, single gender and no enchants. Now I just need to figure out the best way to implement the armor.

With the inclusion of these new assets, that brings my internal version number to 0.4.

The complete mod as a compressed 7z archive weighs in at 22.4 MB and extracted, it is 151 MB. That is right at 1/2 the size of my original estimation and that is with an additional creature and armor set!

EDIT: 2/19/2011

Toying around with an additional creature which may or may not make it into the final cut. At this point, I am just focusing on things that to make the playing of the mod more fun / interesting.

EDIT: 3/14/2011

Making the "fun" part of the mod now. I had the initial setup done but now I'm going through like a fresh perspective and writing down what seemed odd, what I thought I should expect, what I'd like to have seen, etc. Basically trying to make it a fun mod to play. Now that I have all these resources available, it is easy to pick-n-choose combinations, layouts and so on.

EDIT: 4/4/2011

Since most of what I'm doing now is plugin work (and some slight weapon model/texture changes), there really isn't anything that I will be posting since I'd rather have the actual gameplay be a surprise instead of telling everyone all the things I'm doing in it. So please continue to be patient. The next update will probably be a final movie trailer just before release of the mod.

EDIT: 4/12/2011

I had a dream about being attacked by thugs which gave me an idea on how to better improve how the enemy is presented in this mod. I am researching how to go about making it work in the CS the way I want it to.

EDIT: 4/17/2011

Tested the new script and works like a champ. After I finish implementing the new system for all enemies, I will need to test and refine the AI packages based on play testing.